Chapter 2431 (Patreon)

ToC: https://www.patreon.com/posts/23899958

The two tumbled over the edge of the threshold and began to fall.

Laplace whipped itself around, looking at Randidly with hateful eyes. Blood had dried into flaking maroon finger paint on its clockface eyes. It opened its wide maw, filled with broken and chipped teeth and roared at him, through the howling of spatial forces and the crackling of electromagnetic discharge.

Randidly grip’s on his foe didn’t loosen. He hauled himself closer, following the fat, armed serpent as the fell down along the edge of the Nexus. Gritting his teeth, Randidly gathered all of the power he possessed within his body. Power and willingness surged at his touch, ready to deal a decisive blow against this Eternity. Part of him craved an ending to this long slew of struggles. Each surging rush of Nether through his veins whispered of its impending arrival.

If anything, he began to worry about his Soulspace in the aftermath of his prodding; the area had begun to tremble from the notes of his Truths which continued to rise.

His expression twisted as he briefly examined his Truths again, still climbing hand over hand up Laplace’s tail. His plan had been to use those three Truths to reach the Pinnacle at the moment he condensed his Grand Fate, but-

Don’t fixate. Use their power. If nothing else, I’m refining them by activating them. Randidly bit his lip. At almost the same time, he felt a roaring crescendo echo out from the Songstress of Absence in the distance. She had overcome the tome that had held her back outside the final barrier and now rushed to Randidly’s side.

Laplace rolled midair, trying to dislodge him, but Randidly’s mouth stretched wide in a malicious smirk. “Won’t be getting rid of me that easily.”

The further they tumbled down, the worse the spatial forces became. Randidly’s body had endured the Hierarchy of Burden in the past, but what the Fatepiece had missed was the scope of the powers against them as the two twisted and snapped at each other. Each second saw them drifting further away from the protection of the Nexus, although Randidly couldn’t quite tell what their destination would be.

Laplace roared again as spatial destruction ravaged both of their bodies, the note of its voice rising. It was clear that if Randidly decided to force the issue, it would stop using its powers to protect itself and lash out.

Still with the tight grip of the First Authority in place, Randidly dragged himself forward. His smile begged for retaliation.

Laplace’s flesh rippled as it removed the protective temporal barrier and unleashed a few concentrated blasts. These time spikes drilled bloody holes in Randidly’s chest and shoulders, leaving temporal whorls both in the air and in his vessel. But as Randidly settled in more to his Grand Fate, he easily stitched together the wounds. The Songstress released a triumphant cry as she caught back up to his body.

A song of utter devastation rippled out through him. His skin tingled with it. Somehow, that annihilation put the dangerous spatial radiation in perspective. Randidly’s smile widened. His eyes traced the way weaponized space and time interacted, brushing up against one another to create energy imbalances. With his Lethal Tide of Izanami, he began to see new currents to mobilize.

Within the core of his person Randidly’s Truths blazed. The continued proximity to each other meant that they had moved closer into alignment. This resulted in their powers increasing, while also strengthening the pressure Randidly had to endure by housing them.

Every detail matters.

What you can reach, you can touch.

If not now, it will be never.

Laplace howled again and was again ignored. The spatial pressure mounted, but Randidly conjured his images into his body, transforming into one of his image physicalization forms. To face the Eternity, he became his most monstrous version of himself. Bare and gnarled branches from the world tree stretched out from his back like wings. His entire head vanished, consumed by a keening event horizon. His limbs lengthened and sharpened.

From his waist stretched a thick tail of woven roots, ending in the heavy axe blade of Acri.

Laplace unleashed another barrage of temporal spikes and Randidly blurred as he dodged amongst him. His Grand Fate healed the worst of the wounds and Randidly arrived right in front of the Eternity. At the last second, Randidly bit back a curse— right before contact, Laplace swung one of his hands with all the stupidly powerful physical force it possessed.

Tail thrust slammed against the swipe. Space cracked.

For a second the spatial pressure stilled. Then all at once, a tidal wave of force rushed in from every side to fill the vacated space.

“Fuck,” This time, Randidly did bark out the curse as he felt squeezed in every direction by the spatial pressures resulting from their conflict. Sure, Animation Nova quickly glossed over all of the wounds he had sustained and helped him quickly recover, but Randidly also knew all the damage to his physical presence would mean it would take that much longer for his mental acuity to recover.

Besides, Laplace still possessed slightly superior reactions. Even as Randidly still stabilized himself, the Eternity lashed out with his tail, sending temporal whorls in every direction-

The two crashed into solid ground, both completely unprepared for the landing. In fact, it was more like the spatial pressures spiked them into the ground. However, Randidly recovered rather more quickly at this final destination. For better or for worse, his root tail got caught beneath his body on impact and had shattered to pieces, dispersing the lion’s share of the momentum. He scrabbled back onto his feet with a heaving chest.

Meanwhile, the pointlessly fleshy body of Laplace bounced several meters into the air.

Randidly scanned the surroundings, using Nether to forcibly stabilize the state of his body. They stood on the edge of a small platform, beyond which raged the infinite spatial forces that hungered to cut into the Nexus. And looking out beyond the platform, Randidly paled as he viewed the ominous stillness that drifted ever closer to the Nexus.

His body might house a song of annihilation, but he now faced a silence that was even more frightening.

There lurked within that blank absence a sense of pressure that completely blew the animated components of spatial distortion out of the water. That stillness could swallow the Nexus without releasing a ripple. In retrospect, it was almost like the spatial forces channeled through the Hierarchy of Burden became a buffer that kept the absence back. And as the defenses of the Nexus weakened…

Randidly’s head snapped around as Laplace hit the ground again. His eyes finally found the core area of the platform. With the electromagnetic waves crackling and the forces of entropy engaging in a lazy swirl, it all highlighted a strange, jagged series of struts branching out from the central area of the platform. The material was strange, a cross between ivory and plastic ichor. In a way, the stretching connections resembled the branches of a tree.

But the base also resembled a humanoid body, hunched over, beaten down by the passage of time, wrapped in pale spider silk and abandoned at the base of the Nexus to endure all the accumulated pressures of a universe. The body was large, perhaps five meters tall, even while curled up into a near-fetal position. As Randidly looked, he could see that those thin connections vibrating at a high frequency.  The ravages of the Nexus all traveled down here-

Shit, that material- that’s the useless grey stuff that congeals when unharmonized Aether and Nether are forced into close proximity. Or well, I suppose its not so useless as I thought. But… rest in peace Pine. How long has just your body been able to keep the Nexus from falling to pieces…?

Randidly bounded forward, interposing his body between the hunched figure covered in grey goop and the rapidly reorienting itself Eternity. Despite its blindness, Laplace sensed Randidly’s movements and unleashed another roar. Right next to the core anchor of the Nexus, Pine’s corpse, the wild spatial forces were mostly calm. So Randidly had to face the full force of Laplace, the Fickle Crossroads of Time. One more confrontation, at the last possible moment. The Eternity launched his body forward, giving him not even a second to reflect further.

Yet already, a slightly mad idea had taken root in his brain.

“If my Penance can become a Grand Fate… can my Grand Fate become a Penance…?” Randidly muttered. Laplace was midair in an explosive leapt toward him, but his attention pivoted to his inner world. His Soulspace had begun to ache as the tenor of his Truths rose higher and higher and higher. He could barely contain their power.

From his Soulspace, Randidly’s attention shifted even deeper. He found his prepared Sanctum, where the cracked bead in the depths had sent out more jagged feelers, forming razor-sharp veins running through the pool of significance. But the continued cutting of significance as it flowed past those veins meant that the Nether became fluttering motes.

The final result most closely resembled a geometric snow globe. Well shaken and mysterious.

But the top side of the Sanctum remained as it had been, glittering and ornate, an exquisite frame capable of featuring a Penance. Randidly forced himself to relax, as he stirred his Truths together.

Tiamat stepped forward, eyes burning with intensity even while Neveah continued to slumber to heal her mental wounds. Yggdrasil stretched its branches high, creating a rustling emerald canopy. The Songstress of Absence, still triumphant from overcoming a tome on her own by crooning it to oblivion, unleashed her vicious notes within his person.

Randidly felt the climax of his Legend approach. He shivered in anticipation.

His eyes snapped open. Laplace howled and howled, a storm of temporal destruction that set Randidly’s teeth on edge. As the Eternity moved closer, Randidly settled back into the familiar stance of a spear thrust. He had practiced this movement tens of millions of times. He knew every pulley of his body, every shift on his muscle, every explosive delivery of force. The repetitions began to accumulate details. He grasped no attack as fully as the spear thrust.

He had survived and he had advanced. He had reached the cusp of the Pinnacle, listening to the whispers of the Truths of his body. Through the machinations of Yystrix, he had been blessed with a Vessel without having to reach the Pinnacle and make his selection.

At that moment, Randidly remembered the curious eyes of Nyx. When you are faced with that choice, what will your decision be? Will you open the door to a new world or become one? You can’t have it both ways.

Randidly forced that thought back. His images gathered together within Acri. Yggdrasil became the unbreakable shaft, Tiamat became the cutting metal head, and the Songstress became the sheering edge. He thrust his spear to carve out the next beat of his legend.

At the last second, Sulfur acted independently. As the rest of his body executed the thrust, the left arm tightened up into a defensive posture pressed up against his ribcage. Despite its own depleted health, it attempted to protect him.

Randidly pierced easily through the temporal waves and then scythed through the front of the temporal storm. He saw in the bloody clock faces of Laplace’s eyes as the Eternity recognized the simultaneous threat they posed to each other. Laplace didn’t slow his swipe in response. And now that they neared each other, Randidly could see the powerful temporal tears created by those claws.

Randidly’s spear drilled through the chest of the Eternity. The claw swipe slammed into Sulfur.

Still acting independently, Sulfur blazed with all the gathered kinetic energy it had earned by being absolutely obliterated earlier. It swelled and exploded, condensing huge plates of dense armor along its length that would be nigh impenetrable, should the opponent be a being born within the Nexus.

As it was, these heavy chitin plates instantly began to crack underneath the ravages of those claws.

For his part, Randidly forced his spear forward. As the weapon sank into the flesh of an Eternity, he felt again all the accumulated temporal wounds within the snake’s body. His Grand Fate activated, raging against all these flaws. With the momentum of his images and Truths, he unleashed a massive wave of temporal stabilization.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 121!

…

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 193!

However… the immediate successes only made Randidly’s attention darken. Just like Elhume’s physical form, sitting at the core of the mountain range of crystalized Aether… the truth about these high achievers is that the lack of balance in their energy means that most of their immense power is restrained by their own existence. And then when someone like me comes along that can vaporize those calcified layers-

Randidly had felt it earlier when he pressed his weapon deep within the body of Laplace, but the deeper he went, the more destructive the temporal reverberations became. And now, with the weaker temporal wounds healed, all he had done was liberate the more ominous rumblings within Laplace’s body.

Yet Randidly still had a weapon. He gathered up the hyper-animated Truths he possessed, even as his Soulspace began to whistle and rattle like a boiling kettle. He pressed the Truths together, and when that didn’t quite work, he tried to weave them together.

The Truths… didn’t merge despite his insistent efforts. Like oil and water, they slipped off one another and ran through his fingers.